Small is clean

At the beach, home rule is in the bag

By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ

One thing we can safely say about the election last November is that it was divisive, or at least that it has done little to heal the country’s divisions. The smoke had barely cleared (some would say it still hasn’t) when Richard Florida, the noted urban theorist, weighed in with his solution to what was ailing America.

It was devolution, Florida said. The return of power. Not states’ rights, but the rights of individuals to assemble in the smallest meaningful units of government, in their towns and cities, to fix their own problems:

Devolution and local empowerment would enable blue-state metro economies to invest their own resources while allowing others to do the same. It would respect local differences, local desires, and local needs. Importantly, it could also enable blue and red America to mutually coexist.

We cannot go through this trauma every four years. It will tear the country apart. We need a strategy and a system where these two Americas can live peaceably beside one another, and where each can undertake the investments and shape the safety nets and other policy measures they need.

It sounds like a panacea, where the lion will lie down with the lamb, which probably should make us suspicious. It seems unlikely that red and blue America can coexist separately when they’re often arguing about national policy. Still, why toss the baby with the saltwater?

We’ve had instances of devolution in action in South Carolina, and the state House reaction earlier this year, which are telling.

The state’s machinery looms large in the lives of its citizens, directly employing tens of thousands, including its public-school teachers; maintaining or failing to maintain a vast inventory of state roads; involving itself in the selection of officers down to magistrates, often with little local input; and on and on. And then there was the moment in the last session when the House again took up the convoluted question of a proposed ban on bans on the use of plastic bags.

It was a curious moment in part because South Carolina is technically a “home rule state,” meaning that its cities, towns, and counties enjoy some measure of autonomy since the state’s 1895 constitution was amended in 1973.

The ban on bag bans ultimately stalled in the House, putting a vote off for a year but by no means killing it. Similar bans have been pushed in other states by plastics manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the state already has two local bag bans, one passed by Isle of Palms in June of 2015 “to improve the environment of the City of Isle of Palms by encouraging the use of reusable checkout bags and banning the use of single-use plastic bags for retail checkout of purchased goods,” and a similar one passed by Folly Beach last September.

The city of Folly Beach has a population of 2,739. It has an elected mayor and six-member city council, and a slate of ordinances. It’s one of the smallest units of governance you’ll find.

On the first day of summer this year, and the first summer day with its bag ban in effect, Mayor Tim Goodwin said it was “going great.” He attributes the ban’s success, he said, to the fact that “Ninety-nine percent of the businesses were behind it to start with… It’s all about protecting what we have, it’s the fragile environment, and they want to bring their customers here.”

When the bag-ban ban came up again in the last session (a vote in the House was postponed until next year), Godwin said he was frustrated, even though Folly’s ban would have been grandfathered in. “If a community has a problem — and litter is a problem — and it sees a way to control its problem, I don’t think you as a General Assembly should tell us how to fix our problems.”

To be able to fix problems is what makes being mayor of a tiny city rewarding, he said. “This is the nice stuff you can do, the feel-good, great things you can do. I wish we did it all over the state.”

Some might think that wise policy as well, but then it wouldn’t be home rule. Suppose the state banned the use of plastic bags, period, as California did last year, telling all retailers they couldn’t dispense them. Could one small city pass an ordinance saying the use of plastic bags there was permitted?

In theory, no. Just as the U.S. Constitution has a supremacy clause, holding that federal laws are the supreme laws of the land, supremacy is implied in the relation of South Carolina’s laws to all the parts of the state.

“Everybody feels good,” said Dick Cronin, mayor of the city of Isle of Palms, population 4,319, speaking on Thursday of its bag ban “The island residents and the visitors, they appreciate the fact that this is an environmental move to help protect the marsh and ocean areas.”

And there is a bigger argument, Cronin said. “The legislature has promoted and fostered home rule. Making this a statewide issue and taking it away from those of us at the municipal and county level is breaking that apart. We know more and care more about the environment on the coast than legislators from the Midlands and Upstate would.

“What’s going to be next? Is everything a municipality feels is good for our residents going to be taken away?

“Let us do what we think is best. That’s what home rule is all about.”

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